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Running a virtual instance of Vista

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by downrighttired 2 views

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I have absolutely no intention of switching to vista anytime soon, and thankfully my superiors feel the same way. Unfortunately its pretty inevitable that sometime in the next 2-3 years Ill HAVE to support. So I guess I may as well start playing with it a little...
Was just wondering if anyones had any experience running it in VMware or the likes. Im curious about the system requirements for vista and what kind of machine would be required to run it virtualized? Any comments appreciated

3 replies

by p.j.hutchison

I think the main think is memory, use a PC with 2GB of RAM so at least 1/2 can be used for virtual machine.
Also, I would turn off the graphical enhancement stuff such as Aqua to improve performance.
I tried it on a 1GB host machine and it was too slow to be usable.

by hatfira

I use Vista in a VMWare 6 WS session a ton, and I can give you this:

1. It is about 20% slower than a comparably equipped PC. That is to be expected, as XP, Linux, or 2K would do the exact same thing due to VMWare overhead.

2. Do try to use a workstation that you can dedicate 1GB of RAM to. I use it in 512MB, but it is a bit slow. (remember that w/512MB on a "real" PC, it would be a bit sluggish as well.)

3. You won't get Areo in the VMWare session. Just won't happen as the virtualized Video adapter is not DirectX 9 compliant.

4. Try to use a dual-core processor machine as the host. VMware allows you to use one or both processors. Dedicate one to it, and your performaance should be acceptable. I allow mine to use both processors, but I'm not doing Autocad on the host machine. ;)

5. YMMV. Depending oon what you're running in the host, you may get better or worse performance from the VM.

6. Set the host OS to give priority to background tasks rather than programs. That can make a huge difference.

7. Defrag the HDD before AND after installing Vista. Vista w/Office and some associated apps can take 8GB of HDD space or more, so defragging can be a big difference maker.

Note that most of these tips apply to any VM. Not just Vista. Understand the 20% performance hit on like hardware vs virtual, and you should be fine.

Good luck!

by ozzylogic

I'm amazed this post hasn't received many replies! I'm running Windows XP Professional on a system with 1.5 GB of DDR2 RAM, 160 GB HDD, a Geforce 7800 GTX and a 975 motherboard with a 3.46 Ghz Dual Core Extreme Edition processor, and Vista Ultimate runs seamlessly.

The only problem, however, is the lack of Aero, which I understand is due to the fact that VMWare uses legacy VGA drivers. It picked up my Creative Audigy 2 ZS after doing an auto driver search on the web, and I can hear sounds now. I've dedicated 10 GB of hard disk space to my Vista installation (of which 1.8 GB is left, and the only application I've installed is NOD32 AntiVirus for Vista), and 640 MB RAM.

I've read on some forums that the Aero issue can be resolved by installing VMWare tools. I did install it eventually, however, it still doesn't search for new drivers. I'm thinking of installing NVidia Forceware drivers for Vista and see if it does the trick.

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